He travelled at a steady pace, never exceeding thirty miles an hour. Given the route he had chosen, a snaking tangle of back roads and country lanes, he had the better part of eighty miles to cover in order to reach his destination. Once there, he planned to spend the first part of the day sleeping — it would be Saturday — and then rise and attend to his business.
On Sunday he would follow the same routine: first sleep, then work. In the evening he would ready himself for the long ride back. Mondays were his most difficult time. Although short of sleep he would have to carry out his normal duties without giving in to fatigue. Fortunately it was something he was accustomed to doing. He had passed many sleepless nights during the war, lying for hours under artillery bombardments, leading patrols and raiding parties into no man's land. Yet he had never failed to present himself, rifle in hand, ready on the firestep to repel an enemy attack, at the ritual stand-to just before dawn.
A little after four o'clock he entered the outskirts of Ashdown Forest and turned off the paved road on to a rough track. The ancient woodland was scored with forgotten tracks and footpaths, some of them old before the first Roman had set foot in the land, and the way Pike took followed a winding course through forest and field, sometimes almost petering out, but then reappearing in the bobbing beam of his headlight.
He rode slowly. He had been this route only once before.
Dawn found him deep in the forest. He drew up beside a great red oak, which spread an umbrella of thickly leaved branches over a clearing fringed with bush and fern. Turning off the track, he steered the motorcycle into a thicket, forcing the branches aside, and stopped in a small dell overhung with holly. He switched off the engine and climbed stiffly from the saddle. From the seat beneath the canvas bag he retrieved a groundsheet, and having spread it on the grass he lay down and fell asleep almost at once.
By five o'clock on Sunday afternoon he had completed the first stage of his self-appointed task. Using an entrenching tool — a short-handled pick with a broad bladed head opposite — he had constructed a dugout similar to the one he had built in the woods above Highfield. There were some differences. He had no sheet of corrugated iron — that had been a chance find — but he planned to fashion a roof of plaited willow and osier on his next visit. Branches cut to measure would serve as rough corduroying to protect the floor from damp.
The dugout was situated in an area of dense brush a mile from where he had parked his motorcycle. He had scouted the area some months before and marked the spot where he meant to dig. After that he had left it untouched while other matters occupied his attention.
The task he was engaged on took considerable time, but rather than becoming impatient he found his satisfaction — or, rather, his sense of imminent satisfaction — growing almost daily. He felt like a vessel waiting to be filled. Soon he would overflow…
He had discovered this deliberate approach after his attack on the farmhouse at Bentham, which had proved to be a disappointment. He had observed the house and the woman for only a few hours before racing down the slope in a frenzy of excitement. His relief then had been fleeting.
At Highfield he had spent five weekends spread over three months preparing himself. He had observed his prey for many hours. The long period of waiting had given him pleasure of a kind he had never known before. A sense of expectation, slowly ripening, yet indefinitely postponed. Up till the very last moment he had been undecided, and although his physical relief and satisfaction at the climax had been intense, he still felt a sweet regret when he thought of those days.
Having made a complete circuit of the bushes surrounding the dugout to ensure it was not visible from any quarter, he struck out in a north-westerly direction, walking for more than two miles through a mixture of woodland and open pasture. His goal was a low hill planted with oak and beech, which he climbed on reaching it.
Searching for a vantage-point, he spent some time moving from one spot to another before settling on a leaf-strewn bank hard by the exposed roots of a giant beech. Beneath him, at the foot of the hill, a water meadow stretched for a hundred yards to a moss covered wall. On the other side of the wall lay a handsome stone-built manor house and garden.
From where he sat Pike could trace the outline of a path that crossed the water-meadow, bending in a semi-circle to accommodate the margins of a pond, and then straightening until it reached the house where it met another path running along the outside of the wall. This second footway led to a wrought-iron gate, which opened on to the garden.
Pike's cold eye picked out a route from the gate through a shrubbery to an alleyway that ran between high yew hedges and ended at a lawn in front of the house. A pair of tall glassed doors, similar to the ones at Melling Lodge, gave access to the house. Pike saw himself running up the yew alley at dusk. As he played and replayed the scene in his mind he began to get an erection.
On his only previous visit he had watched the family who lived in the house eating Sunday lunch at a table, shaded by a trellised vine, that stood on a stone-paved patio at the side of the lawn. The leisurely meal had taken nearly two hours to complete, and Pike had sat motionless throughout, tantalized by the flickering cinematographic quality of the scene as sunlight and shadow played on the figures seated beneath the vine. The children had been allowed down from the table before the end of the meal and run shrieking into the yew alley, one chasing the other.
Pike had ignored them. He had eyes only for the woman.
He sat for an hour, smoking four cigarettes, without seeing any sign of life. Then one of the glassed doors opened and a maid appeared carrying a heavily laden tray. She began to lay the table. Pike glanced at the sky. Sunset wasn't far off. He wondered how the woman's hair would look by candlelight.
His attention was momentarily distracted by two boys wearing shorts who appeared below him walking barefoot along the path through the water-meadow.
They carried rods and lines and they paused for several minutes beside the pond as though debating the merits of fishing it. Eventually they continued on their way and vanished from sight around the corner of the garden wall. Pike knew there was a village less than a mile away. He had driven through it once.
When he looked at the house again he became aware of fresh activity. The door opened and a grey haired woman in a long skirt stood on the threshold looking out into the garden. A spaniel put its head out of the door beside her knee. Pike frowned. Dogs were troublesome, an unwanted distraction. The woman remained in the doorway for only a few moments, then went back inside the house. The sound of a motor-car engine reached him faintly. The garage and main gate lay on the other side of the house, out of sight.
Pike extinguished his cigarette. Reaching into the deep pocket of his leather jacket he took out a pair of binoculars.
The door opened for a third time. A younger woman wearing a light cotton dress trimmed with red braid stepped out on to the lawn. Pike caught his breath. She was carrying a broad-brimmed straw hat with a trail of red ribbons. He put the field-glasses to his eyes and watched as she shook her head, freeing the hair that clung to her neck.
His mouth had gone dry.
The woman looked up at the sky. Then she glanced over her shoulder and spoke to someone inside the house. Her skin was very fair and Pike imagined it might carry a light dusting of freckles.